A Reminder: Kundalini Is Science, Not Religion

Since the dawn of civilization, religion has been part of human life. To a certain extent so has science, for example, the discovery and use of fire and tools. Prehistoric humans accomplished amazing feats under difficult conditions.

Northern Communities feel climate change impact

The big difference between science and religion was that, in Europe, at least, from prehistoric times to the 17th century, inexplicable phenomena were passed on to religious entities — the Church, etc. Up to that time, religion was science and science was religion:

By the end of the 17th century, Europeans were aware of logarithms, electricity, the telescope and microscope, calculus, universal gravitation, Newton's Laws of Motion, air pressure and calculating machines due to the work of the first scientists of the Scientific Revolution, including Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Pierre Fermat, Blaise Pascal, Robert Boyle, Christiaan Huygens, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Robert Hooke, Isaac Newton, and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. It was also a period of development of culture in general (especially theater, music, visual arts and philosophy).
~ Wikipedia 

Anything that smacked of magic was suspect, and there were many natural phenomena that could not be explained until science found respectability. Even then, many scientists were condemned as heretics until much later on.

Science was never concurrently recognized in all corners of the Earth. A scientific tradition was underway, but it took centuries for everyone to get on the same page. Even now, as illustrated by the struggle to establish universal acceptance of climate change, some refuse to acknowledge the science behind it — much to our general detriment.

CDC - Climate Change and Public Health

What does this have to do with kundalini? Simply that, until Gopi Krishna, no one described this phenomenon as "the evolutionary energy in man." Not even Darwin recognized this essential part of human biology.

Kundalini is older than the hills. It's been part of our beings forever, driving our evolution forward, the engine behind what Gopi Krishna called "the evolutionary impulse." Without it we'd still be one-celled entities.

Way back when, it was only normal that kundalini events were handed over to religion. That when monks and other religious pathfinders began to experiment with meditation and other practices, metanormal results followed — kundalini, prescience, ecstatic states, shamanic powers, stigmata.

These phenomenon were not ascribed to biology; biology didn't exist. Religion took them over, ascribing them to God. The problem that still haunts kundalini is critical mass. Even though kundalini events occur all over the world, irrespective of language, culture, religious preferences, geography, the fact that these events differ as to triggers and effects, makes it difficult for biologists and other scientists to investigate. Kundalini just doesn't awaken in the same way in each individual every time it occurs. No two kundalini events are the same, giving scientists little "critical mass" on which to base meaningful hypotheses.



If you've experienced, or are aiming to investigate kundalini, you cannot rely on the various claims, either those that insist kundalini doesn't exist or the anecdotal accounts that insist it does. Continued research will undoubtedly shed more light on this important phenomenon. For the time being you must rely on your ability to distinguish real from unreal, actual from imagined.

An important irony to consider, however, is the fact that to reach the metaphysical, you depend on the biological (the physical) resources of the body. Notice I use the term metaphysical, not spiritual or religious. That's an important distinction in that metaphysical simply means "beyond the physical." What spiritual actually means no one knows.

The biological, physical (kundalini) opens the door to the metaphysical, and that other great mystery scientists have yet to fully and ably explore — consciousness. Whether you develop your physical resources through practices like yoga or meditation or your resources develop naturally, the physical YOU plays an important role in shaping the metaphysical YOU. In other words, illumination and increased consciousness depend on your biological configuration.

As Gopi Krishna stated:

"Can we deny the fact that whether a fortuitous gift, divine grace, or the fruit of Karma, in every case there is a close link between the talent or beauty exhibited and the oragnic structure of the individual."
~ The Awakening of Kundalini

The Evolutionary Impulse

In spite of Gopi Krishna's focus on the evolutionary aspects of kundalini, many people ignore the fact kundalini is, first and foremost, an evolutionary mechanism.

What does that mean exactly? Kundalini provides the energy needed to nourish nonstop neuroplastic activity in the brain, which, in turn, fosters cell growth and mutation upgrades.

"Billions of years ago, according to the theory of evolution, chemicals randomly organized themselves into a self-replicating molecule. This spark of life was the seed of every living thing we see today (as well as those we no longer see, like dinosaurs). That simplest life form, through the processes of mutation and natural selection, has been shaped into every living species on the planet."

~ "How Evolution Works" - Marshall Brain, How Stuff Works

We evolved from one-celled organisms into the current form we label homo sapiens. It took a long time, but the process was, and continues to be, ongoing and incessant. Thanks to its role in evolution, kundalini never takes a break.

"The initial response of most people who are unfamiliar with the idea of continued evolution of the human brain is to just dismiss it. This is not because it is illogical, or even improbable, but simply because it is foreign to their way of thinking."
~ Bradford, Michael. Consciousness: The New Paradigm (p. 50). Institute for Consciousness Research. Kindle Edition.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks to the acceptance of evolution is some people's belief that we have reached an end form, the last and ultimate configuration for our beings. Not so, we are a work in progress:

• It is possible for the DNA of an organism to occasionally change, or mutate. A mutation changes the DNA of an organism in a way that affects its offspring, either immediately or several generations down the line.
• The change brought about by a mutation is either beneficial, harmful or neutral. If the change is harmful, then it is unlikely that the offspring will survive to reproduce, so the mutation dies out and goes nowhere. If the change is beneficial, then it is likely that the offspring will do better than other offspring and so will reproduce more. Through reproduction, the beneficial mutation spreads. The process of culling bad mutations and spreading good mutations is called natural selection.
• As mutations occur and spread over long periods of time, they cause new species to form. Over the course of many millions of years, the processes of mutation and natural selection have created every species of life that we see in the world today, from the simplest bacteria to humans and everything in between.

~ "How Evolution Works" - Marshall Brain, How Stuff Works

Energy is needed to drive this process forward. Over the eons, as mutations occurred, there had to be an energetic outlay to transform each previous iteration of our species into new, improved species.

Where did this energy come from? It came from the same source it still comes from — part of our sexual energy is used for procreation and part for evolutionary purposes. There is, as Gopi Krishna stated, an Evolutionary Impulse that guides and determines how this energy is to be used.

Creating the energy for the regeneration process begins at the cell level:

"An enzyme is a protein that speeds up a particular chemical reaction. For example, one of the 1,000 enzymes in an E. coli's DNA might know how to break a maltose molecule (a simple sugar) into its two glucose molecules. That is all that that particular enzyme can do, but that action is important when an E. coli is eating maltose. Once the maltose is broken into glucose, other enzymes act on the glucose molecules to turn them into energy for the cell to use."

~ "How Evolution Works" - Marshall Brain, How Stuff Works 

It's a complex and intelligent biological process. There's another aspect of this process that's even more problematic for most people — consciousness. How and where does it fit into evolution? If there's an impulse there must be a consciousness that drives it.

Science is trying — without success for the moment — to find an explanation for consciousness. That's because scientists are looking from the outside-in, trying to locate consciousness on the periodic table as if it was a molecule.

"The argument unfolds as follows: physicists have no problem accepting that certain fundamental aspects of reality – such as space, mass, or electrical charge – just do exist. They can’t be explained as being the result of anything else. Explanations have to stop somewhere. The panpsychist hunch is that consciousness could be like that, too – and that if it is, there is no particular reason to assume that it only occurs in certain kinds of matter."
~ "Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness?" - Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian

So what's with the inside-out approach?

"The first reality we come across is consciousness. The world comes later. We know first ourselves and then the world. So the wiser course is first to understand the knower. What modern thinkers have done is to ignore or bypass the knower, forgetting that it is the knower that is doing it."
~ The Awakening of Kundalini—Gopi Krishna

The "unified field of consciousness from the perspective of neuroscience" compares it to information stored in the cloud as opposed to information stored locally:

"Pim van Lommels take on the unified field of consciousness centres around the concepts of non-locality and interconnectedness:
“'The mind seems to contain everything at once in a timeless and placeless interconnectedness. The information is not encoded in a medium but is stored non-locally as wave functions in nonlocal space, which also means that all information is always and everywhere immediately available.' (van Lommel, p. 224, 244) The implications of this hypothesis challenge dramatically the perception of individual consciousness as something limited and folded upon itself.
“'In this new approach, complete and endless consciousness with retrievable memories has its origins in a nonlocal space in the form of indestructible and not directly observable wave functions. These wave functions, which store all aspects of consciousness in the form of information, are always present in and around the body.
"'The brain and the body merely function as a relay station receiving part of the overall consciousness and part of our memories in our waking consciousness in the form of measurable and constantly changing electromagnetic fields.
In this view, brain function can be seen as a transceiver; the brain does not produce but rather facilitates consciousness.'” (van Lommel, p. 265)

~ "Unified field of consciousness. ONE = MANY" - Van Lommel, Pim. Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience. HarperOne, London, 2010. as quoted in "Transcendental Meditation."

So, if these notions are to be taken seriously — as is more and more the case — then it is clear that both evolution and biology are expressions of a consciousness that is more extensive than present scientific theory supposes. It is consciousness that provides the energy for continued evolution as well as the impulse to continue to evolve.

Gopi Krishna hit the nail on the head when he coined the term, evolutionary impulse:

"The aim of the evolutionary impulse that is active in the race is to mold the human brain and nervous system to a state of perception where the invisible world of intelligent cosmic forces can be cognizable to every human being."

~ Higher Consciousness and Kundalini - Gopi Krishna

The True Teachings

From a Tweet I ran across recently: "@XXXxxxxxxxxx good to see Yogi Bhajan's familiar face, some are misdirecting away from the true teachings"

Sorry, what are the true teachings again? Are they like the US Constitution that some say can NEVER be amended no matter what? Do true teachings mean that certain ideas and principles are frozen in perpetuity like the insects ancient Romans found in blobs of crystallized amber? Can we not discover new ways  — sometimes, even better ways — of doing things?

The Laboratory of the Body

Resistance is to be expected, even in science. Yet, aren't pioneering, innovation, and trailblazing accepted features of the scientific method? A better way, or a more complete way, a new way, a way we never thought of, lateral thinking, new and improved, fresh, unusual, unprecedented, inventive; advanced, state-of-the-art, revolutionary, radical; important, noteworthy.

Some people are always experimenting with new ways; others are dedicated to protecting the old ways. Experimenting with new ways doesn't necessarily mean that the old ways are obsolete. It usually means that the subject matter was larger than we believed at first and there is more to learn, more to uncover, new hurdles or conditions to overcome. If we abided by the old ways, we'd still be sitting in saber tooth tiger skins rubbing sticks together to make fires.

The human being is evolving right before our eyes. In spite of all the issues that grab at our attention — pro football, rampant terror, hacked celebrity nude photos — our collective and individual consciousness is evolving at this very minute. Ideas and new notions are popping into people's heads at an amazing rate — not only in science and self-development, but in every walk of life. It's natural that there be a clash between the old and the new. But to become a dedicated fanboy of only only way — refusing to acknowledge or examine new data — is tantamount to wishing the clock would run backwards or evolution would reverse its course. That's not going to happen! Not in science, spiritual exploration, finance, cooking, sports, fashion, literature, or art.

You may say there's nothing new under the sun. In one sense, that's true. Fashions repeat themselves; fads and fancies run in circles. But I'm not talking about under the sun; I'm talking about beyond it — universal truth — of which we know so little, in which so many are engaged, in one way or another. Puttering around with it, burning the midnight oil to understand it, coming face-to-face with it in the laboratories of their bodies, accidentally brushing up against it in the night, like meeting a wolf in the dark and standing up to it.

Femmes Dansants

Finally, new ways, like new ideas, are traded in the marketplace, so to speak — like the handy cleaning device that makes washing the dishes easier. If it's better, people will support it, most of the time.

Gopi Krishna hit the nail on the head when he coined the term, evolutionary impulse: "The aim of the evolutionary impulse that is active in the race is to mold the human brain and nervous system to a state of perception where the invisible world of intelligent cosmic forces can be cognizable to every human being."

When he made that statement, he realized this would not happen over night. Even if thousands discovered and started to experiment with Kundalini, it would take eons before our beings develop the faculties he describes. In the time it takes to get to that point, the true teachings will be added to and revised many times, just as evolution continues to revise every species over time. Nevertheless, inherent in his statement is the notion of inevitability. That much is clear: That we don't know exactly HOW it will happen, only that it WILL happen.

We Are Born Into This World

Grace Cathedral

We are born into this world, into our fate,
Driven by a will to live,
Inheriting our present moment,
Our ancestors,
Our history,
Our natural world.
 
We are born with the freedom to choose,
And that choice is:
To follow our evolutionary impulse, to grow and do good;
Or to pursue a less noble path,
Against our conscience.
 
To choose the evolutionary path, some would call Tao, some the Path of Knowledge, some the Way,
Is to follow our hearts.
To follow this path is to face fear and grow courage,
To find clarity,
To gather power,
To accumulate wisdom,
And in the end to know death.

One cannot follow this evolutionary impulse without the awareness of this choice.
To be awakened to this choice is to become religious in some sense,
To become aware of the spiritual world we live in, and the consequences of our choices,
To accept that a solely rational thought process excludes and denies intuition,
Upon which so much depends.

It is to accept the value and meaning of inspiration,
To create,
To dance, paint, sculpt, write, to invent,
To help others, to feel the earth’s heartbeat
In our own hearts,
To reflect the music of the deeper world
In the radiation of our beings,
In our light and life.

Therefore, if we wish to enjoy this life,
We must cultivate our awareness of this evolutionary impulse within us, and
Choose to believe that our choice to follow it is for our own good and the good of the world.